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My Guilty Pleasure 2.... Bring It On

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:25:45 -0500

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKPJPKr5NnQ&feature=related

What a week; war, famine, poverty, me using two words which mean pretty much the same thing to make my opening line seem more dramatic and purposeful, repetition, war, famine, tired jokes. It’s all out there: it’s all terrible.

So I don’t know about you, but I ain’t half in the mood for a self important, hyperbolic ramble about a lot of things that don’t make any difference in the world but are intended for a moment of slight amusement, but actually turn out to be nothing but another self esteem crushing escapade as I carry on my journey of not being good enough. Now the self importance is over: let’s get down to it.

So, in keeping with the theme of ‘Guilty Pleasure’ movies I’ve started to go with the cheerleader teen flick of Bring It On, as it fits with my desire to perk everybody up, but also because I’m a raving homosexual/ colossal pervert. Delete accordingly to what your gut instinct is to a 19 year old male liking a film about nauseatingly perky cheerleaders saying ‘For real’ and ‘right on’ for an hour and a half of soul crushing terror.

Just to point it out quite early; this is a good film when you’ve watch it with friends. When by yourself it’s just uncomfortable and a little seedy. I know they are all of a legal age but still, the idea of being a greasy old man looking at cheerleaders for his delight becomes too strong and eventually you become that man and start inappropriately touching yourself and licking the ball of hair that you’ve been collecting off the chairs of public transport for 12 years. All in all it isn’t a world you want to be in.

It’s brilliance whilst being watched with a group because it becomes a symbol of unity. A beacon of awfulness that you can rally around and enjoy. Mocking the stupidly clichéd characters, the self-importance (IT’S A CHEERLEADING COMPETITION GOD DAMMIT!), the first world angst (IT’S A FUCKING CHEERLEADING COMPETITION GOD DAMMIT!) and the oh-so-fabulously camp dance scenes. Which end either with your head in hands or with you putting down your freshly braided hair and Ben & Jerry’s and dancing around the room whilst pillow fighting. (It is clearly the first one that happens with me…Obviously…)

All in all, this film is brilliant, it isn’t even that good, the terrible teen speak and repetition of the phrase ‘For real’ annoys you beyond any reasonable thought and actually make you question the motives of the cheerleaders. Their constant assurances that everything is ‘for real’ leads you in to a conspiracy theory type scenario where you believe they are manifestations of your inner self consciousness, and you actually aren’t perceiving them at all and this is all some elaborate hoax within your mind. Actually; correction, you don’t find yourself thinking this is happening, you find yourself WISHING this is happening, so you can wake up and live in a world where this film doesn’t actually exist.

In short: tacky, clichéd, cheesy, deliriously camp. I love it.

Blogs to come: Trailer review of MIB3
Film reviews/game reviews/feature on a film I dislike. Depends which one happens first.

Possible game/film cross over with someone close to me. Might not happen as she believes I’m using it as an excuse to whore her out for followers. Women eh? (Evil cackle)

My Guilty Pleasure 1.... True Lies

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:12:54 -0500

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvODrWY3P8g

I thought maybe I would add some diversity to what I’m throwing out here and if you hope that means I’m going to stop being savagely vicious towards films in the form of a violent, hyperbolic and simile heavy rhetoric: you are mistaken. I am quite plainly going to find more things to do that for. Hurray…Be happy you tits. I put off a lot of work to do this. All three of you better appreciate this shit.

Right well, to get to a laboured point after I’m sure you’ve already switched off and are now only staring at words because I seem emotionally needy and feel that it will do me good. I’m going to do some justifications of my guilty pleasure movies. Starting with James Cameron’s 1994 True Lies.

Now this may seem like any other James Cameron vehicle, using Arnold Schwarzenegger’s menacing facial expression to pedal an action film to the masses who mistake big budget for directorial genius (He’s good at that, is old James) but it’s actually his best film. Mainly because it plays out like a sexually charged 15 year olds inner most thoughts after he downed a bottle of white lightning, some skittles and a Panther’s brain.

Now you could call foul and say that I am blinded by the fact that this is the first 15 I ever watched when I was 4 years old, and to a 4 year old hearing a heavily built Austrian man say ‘Shit’ and snap a terrorists neck is like being sexually gratified on Christmas Day, and to a 4 year old watching Jamie Lee Curtis do THAT dance is like being sexually gratified by the cast of Mean Girls one at a time, then two at a time, then all of them at once whilst you lie on a tub of ice cream and God whispers tenderly in your ear “You are better than me, you are better than me, you are better than me”. But the magic still holds true today, when I’m 19.

This film is a gloriously testimony to great popcorn cinema, throwing everything and anything at the screen. It’s ridiculous; yes. But a billion times more fun.

Possibly because the film evokes gloriously escapist thoughts in which you run around an Iraqi battlefield, bollock naked carrying only a toothbrush and not only do you win, but you somehow become overlord of the universe because you managed to kill everyone without damaging the brush.

All in all from the billion of gun battles, to the fighter jet sequences to Arnie’s piss poor delivery of ‘You’re fired’, to Jamie Lee Curtis dropping a machine gun on the floor and killing 20 people, this film isn’t brilliant. Many would say it isn’t even that good. But to me it’s fun; and sometimes that’s what you want from a film. A sense of adventure, a sense of playfulness, a sense of fun.

My issue with the FPS debate isn’t that it’s stupid; it’s that all the games are the bloody same.

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:56:00 -0500

Hello. How are you?

You may be wondering what it is I’m doing, but you see; today my course taught me something. YES, my course which costs me about £10,000 a year in which I do nothing short of pay for the privilege of being a slave in a sweat shop to the big corporate machine that is the university paper managed to teach me something today. Ta-fucking-dah; I hope when I grow up I can have the privilege of being paid to do nothing but crush the expectations of idealistic teenagers who think they are actually going to learn how to write articles that will change the world. When in reality all they are doing is learning ways of making the tale of Nana Lewis’ lost dog more emotionally heartbreaking to lie and cheat the readership out of time it could be spent experiencing life, not reading some shit that a middle aged journalist treads out before he goes home alone to a bottle of vodka and his daily staring match with a shotgun as he goes over what an evil, lying bastard he is. You can’t do it. It’s a dog, no-one fucking cares. But that’s my course everybody. Whoop de fucking do. (Ok, I may have unleashed some hidden bitterness there).

Well; what I learnt was that to be a good columnist you need to engage the reader and make things personal. Therefore I am asking you how you are, to make it feel like this is about you before I go on a self indulgent rant that I’m doing in the hope my girlfriend will appreciate me as a gamer and I might get the approval of people somewhere; my inner child is going to get that hug one day. I swear it!

Anyway, I thought I would take a stab at gaming this week, for a little variety. Plus I love the taste of controversy, and nothing is more controversial than poking at games that are only popular because they add inches to the dick of sad, lonely gamers who think that the swearing battles they have on Xbox Live counts as ‘human interaction’. It doesn’t. Stop thinking it does.

This year saw the release of two of the first person shooter genres biggest franchises. Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Which of course ignited a furious debate between rival users over which was the best. Despite the fact that this sometimes violent (virtually, you can’t expect the people who sit on blogs debating these kind of things to get up and do something about it can you? No. That would mean sunlight exposure) debate is pointless and only over shadows the real issues of the modern world; poverty, AIDs, famine, the divide in my relationship my new hat has caused, whether it is ever acceptable for a man to itch his genitals in a public place (for the record, it isn’t. Especially when school children are near. God that was an uncomfortable 28 seconds) it is pointless for another reason: both the games are blindingly identical.

Now this is where the controversy will kick in; right now fan boys will be twiddling their over active fingers to argue that Battlefield 3 looks better! It’s about realism! Call of Duty is mindless repetitive shit which doesn’t look nice! Look at Battlefield! It’s nice looking!

Well yes, apart from a slight variation in graphics which is actually very bad marketing by the Battlefield team, marketing realistic war to a group of people who couldn’t be more indisposed to be involved in battle and running around; and then self labelling it genius. Pah. The jokes on you sir. There really is no difference.

In fact when people label Call of Duty as mindless, repetitive shit they don’t just speak about the Call of Duty franchise, they talk about first person shooters in general. Before you knee-jerk and call me a twat on your twitter page which your mum and a serial killer who said he ‘found you funny’ but actually wants to wear your skin follow, look at it objectively:

Basic Call of Duty mission: Objective. Run to a place, shoot people on the way. Get to the place. New objective. Shoot more people as you achieve it. Repeat.

Basic Battlefield mission: Objective. Run to a place, shoot people on the way. Get to the place. New objective. Shoot more people as you achieve it. Repeat.

See my point? Both games commit the crime of being boring, repetitive and offering little other than graphic improvements to a genre which has been stagnant since the first game of it came out.

Don’t get me wrong there are little differences, Battlefield 3 attempts a story but instead of communicating one through emotion and understandability it decides to over indulge it’s ‘believability’ mark by using unintelligible military speak which is akin to having your brain sexually assaulted by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando. All in all you have no fucking clue what is going on.

Granted the games do have nice touches. Mainly the concrete feeling you get in your genitals every time you run through a crowded room with just a pistol and emerge alive, making you feel like you could fuck the horns off of a rhino. The little one on one combat sequences in Battlefield are cool…Once. Then it just over does them to the point where you wish that every time you pushed B the character would turn and punch you in the face.

The chief issue with these games is the complete avoidance of character development, of any kind. In classic games like Medal of Honour Rising Sun you had the introduction of them communicating with their family, bringing a little heart and realism to a genre which has very little of it.

There is no will to protect your life because you don’t feel connected to the person you are supposed to be; making the whole experience a vacuous escape into a world where you are a grizzled army veteran capable of ripping the skulls off of people from the middle east with your teeth.

The whole genre has been reduced to a simple acknowledgement that: terrorists are causing problems. Kill the terrorists. Which is all well and good for adolescents who think that by killing a virtual terrorist they become a god in the eyes of others; but for people interested in storyline, character, development; pick anything else. Absolutely anything.

Because once you’ve played one first person shooter, you’ve played them all.

50/50 - Review

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:41:30 -0500

When you hear the term ‘cancer film’ you can’t help but fill with trepidation. Your mind shoots to the image of a not-so-heartbreaking romance film where the people are oh so in love that all you do is feel bitter and resentful of their affection as well as wishing their nauseating cliché of a film would stop and you actually end up standing and applauding when one of them dies in a tear heavy finale that actually makes you question whether life is worth living, because if people think shit like this is good, it clearly isn’t as the world has become over populated with idiots.

Either that or the idea of a religious man getting cancer, losing his faith in god and slowly rehabilitating it in a series of moody grey set pieces and talks with monks that makes you think that if there was a god he wouldn’t subject you to this self indulgent, depressing shit and you end up missing the message the film was trying to put out. (I can’t title these films exactly, but I’m sure they’re out there. You’re on tumblr; piss away two hours reblogging moody pictures from these kind of films and find it out for me, you technological clichés.)

Refreshingly though, 50/50 is absolutely nothing like this. It is, from start to finish, an incredible movie that goes up there with my favourite films of all time.

It’s something I could have told you before the film started, as the excellent trailer did little but highlight what a brilliant film this is going to be and also Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in it. Who has never done a bad film; even GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra had a camp, explosion heavy and slightly sado-masochistic charm (all that leather….All that leather.) And he does nothing but excel here, highlighting how truly gifted an actor he is by presenting an emotionally vulnerable, bitter, resentful and mournfully sad Adam Lerner, the character diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and given a 50/50 chance of survival.

Although this sounds like a film which has all the potential to be something that makes middle aged women cry for 2 hours and make everyone else question whether life is worth living at all. It is brilliantly anchored by the lead, and its tremendous supporting cast. All funny; all emotionally devastating at the same time. A truer depiction of real life emotion I don’t think I have ever seen in a film.

From Angelica Huston’s barely-coping mother, Anna Kendrick’s deliriously sweet psychiatrist and Seth Rogen’s stoner best friend; which brings the most mature and capable performance of his career. If he and JGL aren’t up for Golden Globes it will be a stupid omission which may push me to the extent of swimming to America, walking to the Golden Globe headquarters (it shouldn’t be difficult to locate, a huge black building made out of the bones of people who couldn’t afford to go the cinema and were therefore crushed as they couldn’t give to the huge corporate machine. It’s right next to the Oscars HQ, which is exactly the same, but this one actually has Sauron’s eye on it) and expressing my displeasure in a pleasant conversation with the secretary at the front desk. (Did that go the way you think it was going to go? Nope.)

These supporting characters are brilliant and funny, but it is Levitt’s show; bringing out a performance of such believable sorrow, anger and heartbreak that not one person in the cinema wasn’t crying. Except me. I’m a man. Therefore I don’t cry. There had just been a convenient pigeon that flew into my eye and made my eyes water profusely for the final 25 minutes; go on, try and prove me wrong. I dare you.

He balances this with a comically touching performance which expresses the feelings all the audience can’t help but feel sympathy for. Kudos goes to the writer, Will Reiser, for who this film is semi-autobiographical, for really putting the thoughts and fears of a barely living cancer patient out there for all us to see. It’s shocking and emotionally draining in equal measure.

Although I may make this sound like a film which will only drive you to escapist heroin abuse as you slip on the tears and blood of those who already lost the will to carry on. It isn’t in the slightest; the genuine, natural humour keeps you blissfully happy throughout until it reaches its heart wrenching final act just before the immensely satisfying ending; which doesn’t just leave you content. It leaves you with a massive smile on your face as you see what this person went through, how it changed them and what is yet to come.

All in all; this film is beautiful. Real, genuine and believable and should surely get awards recognition, definitely at the Golden Globes if not the Oscars, which is should. After all Juno won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. JUNO?! Seriously?!?!

There aren’t enough awards to give this film though, one that is nothing short of perfect.

Verdict: 5/5

Gone - Trailer Review

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:26:00 -0500

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giRMhrOdVzg

Boy this looks official doesn’t it? Poster, trailer. Someone might think I’m being paid to do this for the amount of effort I’m putting in (for all of you who think it’s easy to google a poster and YouTube a trailer…Shush. It takes valuable minutes of my life which could be spent tackling the great problems of the day. Mainly whether I should ever take off my new, hipster hat which makes me look indie and engimatic).

So, Twilight is drawing to a close and Summit Entertainment can break free of their shackles about a film about a young girl out of her depth in a world she doesn’t understand and makes do with by embracing the unnatural events with an improbable level of careless abandon whilst men try to keep up. And they are doing this with a film about a young girl out of her depth in a world she doesn’t understand and makes do with by embracing the unnatural events with an improbable level of careless abandon whilst men try to keep up….Eh?

Yes, Summit really appears to have branched out with this story to really try and keep it’s audience of gullible teenage girls bated and ready to fork out money for repetitive, mindless shit.

There appears to be a couple of differences between this and Twilight. There are no vampires or werewolves, which is only a blessing. The lead (Amanda Seyfried) can muster a facial expression which doesn’t make me want to rip off my own flesh and smother her expressionless mask of pale, emotionally vacuous void until she dies a rather peculiar death. And there is no love story. Unless you count the relationship between a vulnerable, unaware teenage girl and her serial abducter love; which you can’t. No matter how hard my lawyer argues.

It still shares Twilight’s ability for being deliriously irritating though; and that’s just from the two minute trailer.

Firstly there is the over the top feminism. Oh; a woman gets abducted by a man, another woman who was abducted by a man and wasn’t helped by men goes to men for help and the men don’t help the woman. So the woman has to do it all herself and solve a crime the men couldn’t solve. It’s so deliriously unsubtle I feel like I’m being tied into a chair and verbally abused by Emmeline Pankhurst after a man just told her she should be cooking, squeezed her ass and said she had good child bearing hips. (Please, if you don’t get that joke. Google her. I don’t write these things to go unappreciated you know).

The dull grey tint that visually assaulted the first twilight film reappears; in a vain attempt to make this film feel tonal and moody. Instead it just looks dull and grey. Not even Seyfried’s soul pillagingly wide eyes can make you see colour in a trailer that makes you feel like you are in a teen oriented and unfunny Charlie Chaplain movie.

All in all this film looks like a throw away movie trying to be taken seriously but just looking like your atypical teen movie with a too important issue with a teen favoured lead who hasn’t been good since she felt her breasts and tried to tell the weather in Mean Girls.

Verdict:

See it!
Might be worth a go…
If everything else is booked… You might as well…
DVD release.
Channel 4 network premier in 3 years. - Has to be this one I’m afraid.

(If you’re confused by this verdict method. Get off my blog. You’re an idiot.)

In 48 hours, political leaders in Russia will vote on a law that makes speaking out as a gay, lesbian or trans person ILLEGAL. Because Russia is a large and powerful nation, the international community has stayed silent. If thousands of us raise our voices, they will be forced to speak out and stop this horrific law

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:08:00 -0500

In 48 hours, political leaders in Russia will vote on a law that makes speaking out as a gay, lesbian or trans person ILLEGAL. Because Russia is a large and powerful nation, the international community has stayed silent. If thousands of us raise our voices, they will be forced to speak out and stop this horrific law:

im-not-o-fucking-hungry:

PLEASE SIGN + REBLOG - IT ONLY TAKES 3 MINUTES

Sunshine - Review

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:27:00 -0500

I am fully aware that this film came out nearly 5 years ago, but I did something the rest of the world did as well and chose not to see it; until my girlfriend told me it would be a worthwhile watch and I sat down to finally, full of expectations watch something that looked stupid when it came out; and is stupid now.

Before you assume this is going to be another hyper negative review- this is my favourite film of the ones I have watched since I’ve been doing this bid for emotional gratification; but that doesn’t protect it from the fact it has ludicrous deficiencies. And that’s if I ignore the plot which sounds like something a 13 year old on meth would write whilst he was watching anime pornography; it has the believability of whatever that tentacle heavy exploitation film would have as well.

Sunshine is the deliriously simple tale of a crew of shipmates going to re-ignite the sun. That’s right; RE-IGNITE THE SUN, with something called a payload which is either military talk or a metaphor about money and corruption or whatever; you are too put off by Cillian Murphy’s adolescent drone to want to listen to an explanation of it.

Despite the rather interesting story, good cast and top notch director; the films leaves a lot half baked (Get it? Half baked? Baking hot sun? Film about the sun? No?) which overall makes for a rather sloppy ending where no emotion is omitted from the audience and all you do is look at the pretty light show and wish it was November 5^th where you would be stood freezing your bone marrow to an icy sheen but still feel warmer than how this film leaves you when it comes to its predictable conclusion.

There’s another thing; people alone for a prolonged amount of time in space, the audience knows how this is going to end. Not one person could tell you otherwise. No-one told the writer though who tries to explore as many genres as possible before he falls on predictability to tie the film up. After exploring mood piece, disaster film, loss of humanity and slasher flick he reverts to the obvious after giving Danny Boyle, usually excellent, an opportunity to mishandle all of those genres.

It’s a shame how misguided the ending is when it starts so well; granted the voice over explaining the purpose of the Icarus space ship is so ludicrous it takes a lot of effort not to get up and leave and watch something more believable, like a Katie Price documentary called ‘Confessions of a Catholic Nun’, but once you get past that the film pounces into emotional intensity and believability. Cillian Murphy’s character, Cappa, is built upon nicely and Chris Evans’ Mace is also touched upon to get you into the hope that this might become an interesting character piece. It doesn’t. After this promising beginning it makes you resent and hate the other crew and not care when their inevitable demise is met in a ludicrous manner of ways. With every sudden and unexplainable tonal shift you start to feel like there is nothing more that you would rather do than walk into the ship with a crowbar and destroy every soul yourself, if Michelle Yeoh’s Corazon (SPOILER ALERT) had been on the screen for a second longer I would have had to kill her myself with her own plants screaming SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP YOU TERRIBLY POINTLESS HUMAN BEING!

Once more the ending leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, not because of its predictability but because you stop caring. The death of the sun is supposed to be a threat to earth, but you can’t help but think the world is in as much peril of destruction as a goat at the joint annual convention of vegans, goat worshipers and weak similes; it’s such an undersold plot development.

All in all, after the promising plot, beginning and setting you start to, not dislike the film, but resent what it turns into; you wish it would stop trying to be a mainstream , high CGI film and be an interesting character piece that it tries, and succeeds, to be at points throughout.

Verdict: 3/5

Photo

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:54:59 -0500

Immortals - Review

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:16:45 -0500

Let’s get it out of the way as soon as possible. Yes: this can be compared to 300, it’s made by the same people, it was advertised as the heir to 300, it has slow motion action, hyped up melodrama and a sex scene so achingly cheesy the only way it could be more so is if Freida Pinto went down on herself with a phallic shaped piece of Gorgonzola.

Unlike 300, Immortals has more of a story which wraps the viewer in to the narrative, more unfortunately unlike 300, it is a pale imitation of the technical verve which made 300 such a hit. Whereas the melodrama in 300 was tongue in cheek which somehow made you take the film seriously; Immortals suffers from the very human flaw of trying to be as serious as possible. Which works in bits but for the most part you just want to enter the film, put on a pot of tea and tell everyone to calm the fuck down.

Don’t get me wrong there is a legitimate amount of peril in Immortals, from the inaudible Mickey Rourke as King Hyperion who has taken issue with the fact his name sounds like a Pokemons and has decided to take over the world and kill the Gods. He plans to do this by releasing the Titan’s, Immortal warriors that the Gods enslaved which is explained by that guy who played Ollivander in the Harry Potter movies in an opening voice over which reminds me of an old video teachers who couldn’t be bothered to do their job would show students about ancient Greece and call it ‘education’.

The threat from these Titan’s though is left very half done due to uneven narrative handling focusing on the human side so that by the time these warriors become relevant you have difficulty remembering; who, what, why they are and why you should care about them being killed as all they appear to be is a threat to the Gods who spend the film looking moody at a 45 degree angle and making every man in the cinema wish they did more sit ups. It’s a shame really as the Titan’s are introduced in a way which makes them feel like extras in a big budget, graphic porn film that you got drunk one night, watched with a group of friends and then spent the next 6 years in therapy crying about.

However that storyline is almost totally forgotten until the end where the director cranks the slow motion up to 11 and does a special on ketchup coloured blood flying everywhere, in favour of a standard revenge/stop an evil tyrant/protect the girl story centred around Henry Cavill (playing Theseus, a mortal man chosen by Zeus to protect the world from Pika- sorry, Hyperion, who also has an issue with the little fact Hyperion killed his mother. Furthermore he has issues with his honour, because a film about Ancient Greeks wouldn’t be right without one) who everyone is very excited about. A. Because he is going to be playing Superman in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel next year. B. Because he has a body which makes housewives want to trade in their pot bellied men for a younger, chiselled model.

When the director isn’t showing gratuitous shots of Cavill’s abs however there is little for to work with, as he is obviously instructed to just look mean and shout. You leave the cinema wanting to kick and be hateful to things because prolonged exposure to Cavill’s face makes you believe that anger and hate are the only emotions left in the world; I saw a girl smile on the way out and I attacked her with holy water. He is not alone in his inability to just talk and therefore shouts instead, as that is also Luke Evans’ (Zeus) calling card. The director (Tarsem Singh) tries to hit you with so much masculine machismo that every time one of these characters talk you feel like you’re being dicked in the ears by the Gods of massive erect phalluses. Which on the whole is very overwhelming.

The balance is almost restored by Mickey Rourke, who seems to think audibility is the mark of bad actors and spends the whole film mumbling things that a professionally trained linguist from a Bond film would have trouble understanding.

Don’t get me wrong; there is a lot I like about Immortals. When the action finally gets going after the seemingly hours of clichéd ancient Greek film talk about honour, family and pride, it’s breathtaking. Pacy and perfectly edited. The overall colour hue is wonderful and the costumes are good, even if some of the headwear looks like someone shot electricity through the bell end of a porcupine and the breastplates have nipples. Nipples damn you; why?

But the issue remains that a mishandled narrative lessens the tension to the extent that by the end you aren’t wishing the Gods to defeat the Titans to save the world, you want to see what HENRY CAVILL!!!!!! Is doing, you don’t care when something emotional happens to the Gods because you don’t know enough about them to want to pay attention; you want to see what HENRY CAVILL!!!!!!!!!! Is doing.

All in all the film is good, you are just hurt by the thought of what an action epic it could have been.

3/5

The Dark Knight Rises: Filming finished

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:42:00 -0500

So; after one hell of a long time of people foaming in the genitals (that’s right, in. Don’t say I don’t know anything about human anatomy) over posters, promos and all the hidden footage that a man could ask for (actually, it’s been a little much. I feel like I could write the film myself after the 8 and half days of ‘EXCLUSIVE! BEHIND THE SCENES! footage which makes like a poorly done Cloverfield homage and showed us little other than Tom Hardy looking like something a sado masichist would be put off by) The Dark Knight Rises has finished filming.

Despite the sense of excitement I felt when I saw the first promo, it’s very quickly abated to be replaced with nothing but nausea over every.fucking.leak.and.every.fucking.non.theory being gushed over by fan boys on the internet; who let’s face it; know fuck all.

What can be said for certain? Well it’s Christopher Nolan, so expect the film to be done in dull grey’s and he will spend the 8 months of post-prod making sure the film is at least 30 minutes longer than it should be as he tries desperately to work in a pretentious message/narrative progression which is too complicated for any normal human to understand; which is what leaves his films with such positive audience responses. As this age in which ‘not knowing’ is treated like a diseased toe nail in a beauticians people leave his films scratching their heads and just nodding along agreeing ‘It was amazing’ where they rush home, google an explanation for the film, still don’t get it and believe that the fact they have no comprehension on what the fuck is happening is due to Christopher Nolan’s genius. It isn’t. It’s just bad fucking film making. See; Inception.

If someone gave me $250 million to make a movie and I made something no-one could understand without intense research on the internet which may stop virginal Batman fan boys from wanking for 10 minutes since the first time the hairdresser blew on the back of their necks as a 12 year old I would be dragged through the streets of Africa by my pubic hair and beaten with the dried twigs that people the money could have helped use for houses… (and breathe). Christopher Nolan does it and it’s lauded as being genius; it isn’t.

What leads me to believe this might happen with The Dark Knight Rises I hear none of you asking? For one; Catwoman. Something which has never been done well and Nolan’s ego has pushed him to pointlessly put in just so he can say he is the first person to do it right. Which he won’t be; he will be the first person who writes an extra 20,000 words of speech to try and justify her presence at the end of the film before Gary Oldman goes all wise (See; Two-Face, The Dark Knight) and upstages Anne Hathaway who is as useful as the funny smelling tissues that will be pulled out of the aforementioned Batman fanboy’s bedrooms after they decide to watch a decent account of Catwoman on the internet; the details of which I will leave out.

Furthermore; the largest cast in history will leave a myriad of characters half baked and just there for the sake of it (if Alfred loses screen time there will be some bloody violence from me as for Lucius Fox, fuck him. No-one cares about him, not even the Morgan Freeman novelty factor can make him a justifiable human being).

I have found miraculously a new excitement for Batman within these anger filled words; even if it does mean listening to Christian Bale do an impression of a badger who had his vocal cords sexually abused by a barbed wire wrapped baseball bat, Anne Hathaway trying to justify her presence among the human race and Christopher Nolan indulging his own ego to the extent I am shocked the camera isn’t constantly shaking from all the self abuse he must give himself as every painstaking wide shot is acted out for the puppet master.

Bring on Summer 2012.

Realised I better upload a picture or risk having a Panorama...

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:02:51 -0500

Realised I better upload a picture or risk having a Panorama documentary about me and how my shady figure and violent rhetoric was an allure for 5 year old girls. A licence fee well payed.

So, now know I’m an actual human and sexual advances 5 year old girls will not be tolerated. Ok? Ok!? I don’t want to have to say this to you again. Stay away 5 year old girls. I’m too pretty for prison.

Ides of March - Review

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:51:00 -0500

Ides of March – Review

There’s a delirious sense of self importance that prevails through American dramas at this time of year. Remember the words ‘Self Importance’, because there are non-truer that can be said about Ides Of March.

It was naive of me to expect more, as with any film out in the October- February segment it has the ‘Oscar contender’ tag sprayed all over it; and boy doesn’t this film know it. The film stewards you through a few political debates early on, for no other plot development point than to say to the audience ‘This film is intelligent and important, take it seriously. Please, take it seriously, the academy needs another reason not to give Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar even though he deserves at least 3.’ It’s this desperate clawing for the audience to be impressed and overawed by the serious subject matter that hamstrings the latter parts of the film. Where director George Clooney should be building characters he likens the opening to being savagely beaten by the declaration of independence for some sham American pride ploy with the academy; for no other reason ‘Look how intelligent this is! Give me an Oscar!’, a nomination is surely in the offing for his direction, partly because he is George Clooney, but also because when the film (finally) hits moments of tension and actual narrative progression he handles these bits superbly, subtly using camerawork to build intensity…However that doesn’t last very long; as another intelligence bating segment of being ear raped with American pride clichés and stupid political opinions and sways towards even more farcical plot development points which destroys any hope you still may have in our corrupt world of silver tongued politicians raping our national integrity and willingness to go on.

Sadly these moments are few and far between, mainly there when the excellent Paul Giammati is on the screen working with the partly wooden, partly brilliant Ryan Gosling. Who has the same issues with silence as he does in Drive, there is just too much of it; after Blue Valentine he has taken a downturn into self important and ‘I don’t need to pull facial expressions to convey emotion’ which may seem very winning and good; but it likens him to a moody teenager trying to piss off his parents through forced silence and looks of ‘Bitch, please. Shut up.’ Don’t get me wrong, I like Ryan Gosling, but his face needs to be awoken again, preferably by repetitive hits with a salmon charged with electricity.

The film sadly never manages to build on what it could have been, with key narrative points being handled badly just as often as it is handled well; and the underwritten characters becoming less and less understandable as the film moves along. Why are they doing this? You are never told why, because important films don’t do such a pedestrian thing as give reasons; ‘PLEASE GIVE ME AN OSCAR!!!!!’ is painted everywhere. The ‘good guy’ Ryan Gosling entirely reverses his character with no discernible plot twist there to justify it; again a failing of the early parts of the film, which neglect to show you what these characters are at heart, and that’s why at the end not only are you not sure WHY they are doing this, but you aren’t sure you care.

Verdict: 2.5/5

Self-important rambling hinders this film; it’s a politics piece more so than an emotional piece which undermines the effect of everything that happens. You’ll leave not knowing if what you saw was important; or just vacuous stupidity.

The Bachelor (TV Show) Review

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:53:00 -0500

It’s very difficult to formulate a definitive opinion on ‘The Bachelor’, which features Gavin Henson’s quest for love from an array of 20 women selected from, one would imagine, the most desperate of all ‘love wanted, please Love me!’ pages.

Prime examples focus on Carrie, a sweet mannered red head who, after 30 seconds of a conversation with Gavin confesses a deep and passionate love for him, I’m sorry, what? Young Laura, who puts on an exterior of hard, tough emotional barriers to hide, what you later find, to be a sensitive girl. This wide array of love misfits, all beautiful, all severely emotionally damaged makes it, from a single males perspective, easy to hate The Bachelor.

…I would kill for that chance, seriously, 25 emotionally damaged and desperate enough to go on a game show women all fighting for my love? Where do I sign up? Gavin Henson. The prick. Parading the desperate delights of the flesh in an intimate swimwear photoshoot, the bastard. Gratuitous shoots of his own perfectly chiselled body. The twat. What starts off as an emotionally charming quest for ‘love’ becomes a ‘This is why you should try hard in PE lessons guys’ it’s incredibly galling. The bastard.

However, once you get past the fact this man is being paid to show off his deliriously good body, boyish charm to win the love and then take a pick of 25 beautiful women who he can mate with, so he can have more good looking children and they can all live happily ever after salivating over their perfectly chiselled bodies and wondering why ugly people exist. The bastard, prick, twat, douchebag (granted, it does take a while), the show becomes effortlessly charming.

Helped in no short measure by the charm of Henson himself, yes I did say that. I don’t know how he manages it but the vain, self obsessed, oil coated prick who likes to remind housewives what it’s like to be young and make them leave their ‘trying as hard as I can!’ husbands from the billboards isn’t here.

He appears to be as deliriously uncomfortable by the surroundings as the audience is made to feel when Carrie’s maternal clock starts beeping from within her loins and she starts crying into a bottle of vodka, sacrificing goats over a picture of Gavin Henson’s awkward face and crying ‘WHY WON’T HE LOVE ME?!??!’ (Ok, maybe this hasn’t happened, but there are still several weeks, and considering she was ready to kill herself when she was the last to receive a red rose, I wouldn’t be shocked if it did), it all makes for a rather engrossing journey.

Ok, so it’s a beautiful man having his choice of beautiful women for who he can leave and make beautiful babies, but beyond that grand display of egotistical preening, fake tan, hair spray and more primark dresses than a Vietnamese child can make in a month, it actually becomes a charming tale full of humour and cuteness as you grow with Gavin Henson….The prick.

Nights Out: (A year old)

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:49:03 -0500

Now I can’t be alone in this (I probably am, which will make this whole thing seem a lot more pathetic and paranoid based) however I believe social occasions are more an art in looking good and like you know what the fuck you’re doing to people you dont know rather than actually enjoying yourself. This social obligation defined as ‘going out’ is a proverbial orgy of people pretending to be someone mildly cooler than the image they project at school, work, home, prison. Now I dont do cool, I do charmingly awkward to the extent people feel pity on me, but cool I do not do. I thus decided to take a critical look back on the protocols of the evening, and see how it went…

Phase 1: The Arrival

Do you remember those days when it used to be cool to actually turn up to a social function on time? Maybe early if you were the real cool cats (you can probably see by the use of the phrase, cool cats, that I do not fit in well to the hipster, uber cool lifestyle of the modern youth), yes the naievity of those days, when you turned up, you were praised, you turned up late, you were scorned by the childs angry parent because they already cut the cake and blew out the candles. These days, the later you are the more hardcore you are, the other week I went out and the night started at 10.15…10.15?!?!?!?! Usually I’m tucked up in bed after doing my 17 ceremonial evening wanks by that time. So, back to the point, the invite said 8. So me and my mate felt it would be daring and ‘cool’ to leave at about 8.20 and get there for 9, to say we didnt spend 45 minutes debating this would not be a lie, we spent 1 hour 20. This was in the hopes that:

1. We would appear slightly cool and winning.

2. There would be someone there we knew as we entered, because another drawback of these social occasions is the fact that in a bid to barter the affection of everyone in the year the host always invites 174,000 people he/she doesnt fucking know so that they may have someone to cry over their disentegrated body after their life long search for social gratification comes to a miserable end.

So, thus far the plan was going swimmingly, we entered with no hiccups on the door, despite the barmans rather callus remarks about the party hosts mothers tits, we enter at exactly 9 take two steps in and think. Fuck. We dont know anyone here. Well thats an overstatement, we KNOW them, but have a conversation with them? Well, the guests there resembled a who’s who of human cunt therefore, after spending 2 hours in each others company before hand, 40 minutes in each others company as we walked down whilst avoiding eye contact of drunk university students we thus decided to stand awkwardly for another 40 minutes, pretend to text and look like we were actually invited. Our hope was that if we took up a place of residence in the designated area, that when people we could stand turned up that they would congregate around us and we would there look like an uber-cool social magnet.

Phase 2: Social Interaction

Now, anyone who knows me will understand that this is not my strong point, I am very much like a despot, in how I hide in my house and venture out only to prove my existence and keep the fear up. Now you may be foolish enough to believe that this is my bid to appear enigmatic and sexy, it isnt, I wish it was, the real reason is that large social gatherings make me chronically uncomfortable. Therefore, the first 40 minutes of looking like we were invited consisted of myself exchanging awkward small talk with people I kind of new and people who were so drunk they definitely didnt know who I was. We trod carefully, making ventures to the free drinks table only when there was a gap in the room sufficient enough for us to squeeze through without having to ask anyone to move out of the way *shivers at the thought*. Then in a moment of harrowing importance, I see someone I know. Ok, this has to be played carefully, they were in mid conversation with someone else who I didnt know, so I couldnt go and interrupt otherwise I might be roped in to talk with someone I dont know which inevitably leads to me over compensating and trying to be ‘the funny one’ by talking about rape, love eggs and sex swings. They’ve stopped talking. HURRAY! After walking with as much enforced comfortableness as possible (difficult, as my ass cheeks were clenched with fear) I walk up to them, I say hello, she says hello back. We hug. We stand…fuck. …’So what do you think of love eggs?’…

Phase 3: Photographs

Now once you have managed to yourself to barter your way into a social group, there comes the inevitable round of picture taking. Now for the unaware the goal of this is to look like:

A. You enjoyed yourself

B. You like the people you are with

C. Not like a person on day release (much harder than you think)

D. (most importantly of all) To look mildy attractive, so when people on facebook the next day have a gander at your pictures they may think to themselves you would be mildly worth while to have awkward, sweaty kissing encounters with them in a club the next time you are out.

Note that an occurence of C happening negates all chances of D happening, whereas it greatly improves the chances of A and B happening. This is by its very definition an uncomfortable experience, chiefly because you always get told to be matey with someone you have nothing but contempt for, therefore you have get within an inch of eachother and smile awkwardly, whilst inside you’re thinking ‘Don’t touch me…please don’t touch me’ meanwhile someone with a camera is stood there observing this with a kind of orgasmic pleasure. You then proceed to observe the picture and see that you have satanic red eye, a seedy grin and a very clear ‘FUCK OFF’ written all over you’re face.

Phase 4: Drinking

Ah yes, a rather idiotic social stipulation between teenagers, you are out, you must get drunk, you are young, you must get drunk. Now sorry to break it to you, but it was most definitely opportunist rapists who enforced these stipulations just to catch you as you stumble blindly out of the bar at 4 oclock and actually believe that his ‘special cloth’ has something on it which isnt chloroform. As I dont drink (much) I undergo what one may call ‘Verbal abuse and spine crippling peer pressure’ because apparently I’m a ‘pussy’. Excuse me if I dont like the idea of waking up in a bush next to a 6 ft 8 guy in a tight vest and a bleeding ass crack with a faint taste of horse tranquilizer on my tongue. However last night marked a difference, as I found a drink I liked, yes it came about via peer pressure, however a marriageable teenage girl held my hand and dragged me to the bar, she was lucky I didnt ravish her there and then.

Phase 5: Dancing

Now. Do you remember that scene from Spiderman 3? In which Peter Parker dances down the street and looks the very definition of ‘cunt’? (Just in case you dont: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4tDbEuMxys ) Now you probably know where I’m going with this but no, I do not dance like that guy, I WISH I could dance like that guy. I would gladly choose overcompensating and unconvincing emo hair over what I did. Which was nothing. I was dragged onto the floor. And I just stood there shaking my head in disbelief, now I had drunk probably 15x more than I had ever done in the past, was not drunk and was not prepared to dance. I could just about manage it in a group of 4 and 5, but it is when some drunk girl starts gyrating against your crotch is when I stiffen up (…No. Not like that.) Even when a girl I have been wishing everyday for about 5 years to have the chance to copulate with and dissapoint her comes up (…No) I cant. It’s not the little man in my head shouting ‘You will look like a twat. Don’t bother.’ It’s the fact that apparently everyone around me is doing the same, now don’t get me wrong, I’m all up for a good bit of crotch gyration, its one of my favourite teddy bear past times. However, it is when you are in a crowded room of teenage boys with semi’s and girls trying to convince themselves that this is worth it and stinks of sweat, alcohol, vomit and pre-cum that I can’t hack it. It just reminds me of some kind of inverted swingers party, so I stand there awkwardly (which as you have probably gathered by now is my go-to play) and pray for it all to be over…oh god why isn’t it all over…

Celebrity Magazines

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:47:00 -0500

As I stand in the questionably hygienic news agents, clutching my cold bottle of Dr. Pepper, perusing the magazine section for no other reason than to catch a crafty glance at the top shelf material, and hope the stern looking shop owner doesn’t judge me if she notices this perilous game of cat and mouse, my heart sinks. For two reasons:

1. The revelation they have covered the front of the top shelf material. Seriously do these people not care for others?
2. Witnessing the pixie-eyed teenager; the over-tanned, past her glory days, middle aged woman; the effeminate man dying to see the development of Shakira’s new camel toe scandal (excuse blasé use of stereotypes, however I do feel that a winding piece of in-depth, descriptive prose would undermine the flow of what I’m trying to achieve, not unlike this rather self indulgent bit in brackets) picking up one of the thousands of variations of celebrity stalk- sorry- themed magazines.

Why oh why do they continue to fund the violent intrusion of people’s privacy, and give the pointless people who are featured on every other page more of a god complex than they already possess?

Not being a self-involved megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur, being a celebrity has never really appealed to me. Fantasies of leading the cast of a breathtaking biopic of a blind, deaf, mute with no arms and no legs, being critically lauded, winning an Academy Award, bestowing congratulations of others in a totally non-condescending un-forced manner…a mere digression.

Celebrities infect our personal lives with more regularity than stomach bugs or awkward meetings with your partner’s family, however it is not them that I am solely against, well maybe some of them, it is the fact that some bright media mogul with a life so dull he enjoyed the prospect of peering into, and bitching about, others more than he did sorting out his own insecurities and failings (more blasé stereotypes I’m afraid, however it works for me) decided to make a magazine focused around the lives of these people.

My question is why? They just do a job. Leonardo DiCaprio is an actor, he acts, he entertains, Justin Bieber is just a singer, he sings, he…well you get my drift.

However, these people have thousands of litres of ink, thousands of hours of typing poured on them for the rather perverse interest of the people who have not achieved such success. And?

It’s not like there are magazines devoted to the inner workings of milkmen, although based on reputation their lives would be much more interesting than the fact that Robert Pattinson apparently has a new chest hair.

Maybe its escapism that drives people into these false, apparently, ‘better’ lives.

Maybe immersing one’s self into the ‘drama’ of Katie Price’s 17th thinly veiled criticism of Peter Andre’s genitalia helps people to forget that bills are due.

Maybe reading about Angelina Jolie’s 78th adopted baby makes you forget that you would enjoy locking your own kids in a cupboard, not for long, just long enough to let them know that you’re one more ‘Are we there yet’ from becoming a violent sociopath.

It is here where one of my main issues lies with this business: though lucrative, it spends far too much time immersing people into the lives of the super celebrity whilst the real world, the real issues are neglected and put on a back burner…it was neglect that allowed Hitler Austria and Czechoslovakia before he went after the rest of the world.

We spend too much time following the lives of the individual when the lives of the masses are more worthy of our focus.
So: Heat, Ok! (And other unimaginative, mono-syllabic named magazines)

Consider yourselves officially placed on a naughty step of some description - the one for those diverting the world’s focus into the pointless lives of celebrities - the step for those ignoring of the basic human right of not invading people’s privacy – and maybe the one that promotes shallowness and taking people at face value rather than anything worthwhile.

To be honest, I don’t care what step you sit on, I lost track of this convoluted analogy
about 2 suggestions ago, just as long as this step is as far away from the public as possible….oh and take Katie Price with you.

Intro.

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:43:06 -0500

I’m a desperately sad human being in constant need of emotional validation. So what better to do than start a blog!

I’m very aware I’m joining a world already vastly populated with ‘misunderstood’ teenagers who wear checked shirts up to the top button, have plug earrings and think that society is wronging them. And thus find the best way to get back at the so called ‘man’ who gets them down is to reblog hopelessly stupid indie pictures of a lone girl on a street, or a pair of converse; or some other form of self important shit whilst they wallow in self pity and don’t realise that the way to fix their so called ‘melancholy’ is to get off their fucking arses and do something worthwhile. Preferably crawling in a rat infested pit and being eaten alive so as to rid us all of their fucking stupidity; and do so in such a way that at least gives us all a laugh before the agony of the death they said they felt nothing about takes them and we go on and live our lives, still not caring about you stupid bastards.

If you were wondering what this blogosphere is going to be about; there you have it. Rants. But rants with structure; my primary interest is films and television, so expect some stuff about that.

But also rants about life. For example I’m going to post some old things of mine which highlight that I’m just as self damaged as the checked shirt wearing pillocks I just had a very well mannered rant about.

Enjoy it; because I fucking won’t.